Where does all this money end up, anyway?

When money moves around, it undergoes name changes. Money moving from a corporation into some nice math and landing somewhere in the government is — tax money.

There are some scholars who argue that one such tax, the corporate income tax, is not better off in its newfound home. Here’s the idea.

Eliminate the corporate income tax. Completely. If companies reinvest the money into their businesses, that’s good. Don’t tax companies in an effort to tax rich people.

More convincing needed?

“The corporate income tax makes no sense whatsoever,” said Robert Frank, a professor at Cornell. “We don’t want to prevent Microsoft and General Motors … from investing more and improving their product line,” [Dean] Baker said. “That’s a good thing in my view.”

Another sanctioned fun idea.

Tax carbon emissions. Yes, that means higher gasoline prices. It’s a kind of consumption tax, and can be structured to make sure it doesn’t disproportionately harm lower-income Americans. More, it’s taxing something that’s bad, which gives people an incentive to stop polluting.